Burnerblog

Yesterday, I received my 50mm lens from New York. I ordered it online, as it’s around $104 online, and is considered by almost everyone in photography to be the best Nikkor 50mm lens bar-none. Most pros even prefer this lens over the more expensive versions because it’s just that darned good!

I took a few pictures with it last night at ISO 1600 in the house, and the pictures were phenominal. No macro ability, of course, but at “normal” distances, the pictures I took were really nice. I haven’t gotten a chance to convert them from RAW to jpg, so I can’t post any of the pictures with it right now, but I will later.

Also, after Gelli gets home from school today, she wants to go out to shoot some pictures. We may head into the city to get some there at dusk. We may just have to drag Sherry and Brendon along so we can eat somewhere downtown. There’s just too much pretty neon down there to NOT take pictures of!

I’m lucky that Gelli is taking such a liking to photography: it makes her want to spend more time with me going out on our “shoots.” She’s learning fast, and hopefully, will quickly outpace my abilities.

I’ve been taking lots of pictures getting to know my new camera. Gelli and I went out Sunday to take some pictures; me with my D50, and she with her Stylus 360 (I gave her my old point and shoot when I got this new camera). She did VERY well with hers, and was taking some VERY creative shots (moreso than me).

Here’s a picture I liked because it just looks so serene. MishMish works in this building, too!

It’s nothing special, but I did a bit of post processing to straighten the building (the curvature of the wide-angle lens distorts the building) and also to lighten it up and add a bit of contrast to it.

Here’s a pic of Gelli, my daughter.

It’s taken with flash, so the shadows on her face’s lower left section is a bit harsh, but overall, it’s a decent pic.

…and a decent lens. Not the best lens, but pretty nice. I figure I’ll spend the big bucks on a better lens in another month or so.

For now, however, I’m pleased with the camera and the lens. Here are two pictures I took tonight. The first was taken of Gelli in her room with the camera on full auto.

The second picture was taken at ISO 1600 with the aperture open (A mode).

I’m enjoying it quite a bit, and hope to have more fun with it this weekend.

Hmmm… so while I ordered my new Pentax DSLR, I stopped the order (in time, thank God). I think I’m going to change formats. While I really love my old Pentax stuff, I have to face reality: Pentax is behind the power curve, and may very well follow Konika-Minolta. If I want to shoot any 35mm in the future, I have my Pentax gear. For digital, I think I’m going Nikon.

The D50 with the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70 mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED will be my kit for a while, until I can get some more money saved for perhaps a good zoom and a dedicated 50mm later on. Until then, the 18-70 has some really good things written about it, and the features of the D50 match the Pentax *ist DS2 that I was going to get with very few exceptions.

The price was a huge factor, too; the D50’s just dropped in price recently by quite a bit, making them even more affordable. I’m very close to getting mine, and I can’t wait!

This picture was taken on vacation in 2003 with my grandmother. Sherry and I had went on our honeymoon and met up with my grandparents there. This picture was taken with my Olympus Stylus 360 in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary. The bridge my grandmother is standing on used to be a river when she was a child, and she was lamenting how dams had shriveled her childood’s favorite river into a mere stream. I decided to use this effect of faux hand coloring because to me, it appeared as if in her mind, she was back in time, back in her childhood, remembering the times she and her friends played in that very river, not far from there. I secretly set up the shot and called her name. The smile on her face was not directed towards me, but was her smiling at the memories she was reliving. Thus, she is in color as she was, yet the scenery is in black and white, as most pictures from her childhood are black and white. Truly magical.

When sawing laminated particleboard shelves in your garage with a circular saw, make sure you wear eye protection. If you don’t you can end up in the ER with a very sore, scratched, and cut eye with plastic shards embedded in it.

Ask me how I know.

Let’s just say I’m off work tomorrow and have to go back to see a doc to make sure my injuries aren’t ulcerating (which could lead to loss of vision). Darvocet is a good drug, though… makes the pain of putting the antibiotics in my eye not quite so severe.

It’s probably a good thing I don’t have the new camera yet, or there’d be a really gross picture of my eye posted here right now.

This is the new baby… bought today, arriving sometime later this week or early next week.

I can’t wait for it to get here… then the real fun begins. I already have lots of lenses for it, so it’s going to be fun rediscovering my gear.

See… I just posted twice about the same thing; my trip to the ER. I am on Darvocet right now, and everything is kind of flexible and bendy to me right now… anyway, I didn’t remember posting about it last night, so I thought I’d post about it today and when I check to see how the post looked, lo and behold… VOILA! DOUBLE POST!!!

I guess I’ll leave ‘em up as a testament to my stupidity and my incapacity right now… in the head, that is.

I spent a few hours in the ER yesterday. I was cutting some laminated shelves, and a few plastic shards got into my left eye. Scratched it up pretty badly, and got some pieces embedded into my eye (that the doc had to remove). Now I have to put eye drops into my eye every four hours and I have Darvocet for the pain (which is considerable). Stupid me… I thought we didn’t have goggles or I’d have worn them. Turns out, Sherry had found some goggles just last week and they were sitting on my bench right behind me.